Dave Prentis Needs to abandon Gordon Brown Fantasy
JonR | 19.01.2005 00:19 | Social Struggles | London
UNISON United Left General Secretary candidate Jon Rogers criticises the support voiced today by incumbent General Secretary Dave Prentis for Gordon Brown.
Dave Prentis, UNISON General Secretary is a late but welcome convert to the ranks of those prepared to say that Blair must go. However, he is quite wrong to foster illusions that Gordon Brown as Labour leader would deserve a welcome from trade unionists, as he does today in an interview with the Scottish Daily Record.
Dave Prentis, UNISON General Secretary is a late but welcome convert to the ranks of those prepared to say that Blair must go. However, he is quite wrong to foster illusions that Gordon Brown as Labour leader would deserve a welcome from trade unionists, as he does today in an interview with the Scottish Daily Record.
This article has already been spun - for example, by the BBC - into something along the lines of 'union leader backs Brown for PM.'
Gordon Brown is the champion of the Private Finance Initiative, which attacks the jobs and conditions of UNISON members. More recently, he rushed the announcement of 100,000 civil service job cuts because he was prepared to use mass redundancies to wrongfoot the hapless Tories.
Some of the jobs now being lost belong to UNISON members working in central government. These UNISON members won’t thank Prentis for backing Brown.
Nor is Gordon Brown lifting a finger to prevent the attack on public service pensions. The Daily Record quotes Dave Prentis saying that 'the government haven't had the sense to defer it (the attack on pensions) until after the election.' He should be demanding that there are no cuts in our pensions before or after the election!
Support for Gordon Brown is just the highest-profile expression of the politically-indiscriminate approach to supporting Labour in the runup to the general election which gives the lie to protestations that UNISON Labour Link is fighting our corner within the Labour Party.
While one part of our union prepares to fight the government to defend our pensions, another is proposing to issue precisely the political blank cheque to New Labour which we had been told would never again be written.
Through TULO (the Trade Union Labour Organisation), the trade unions have been preparing financial support for Labour in marginal constituencies whether or not the MPs in those constituencies support UNISON policies, or are enthusiastic New Labour apparatchiks who support the attack on our pensions.
The immediate question confronting UNISON members right now is the attack upon the Local Government and NHS Pension Schemes. Industrial action will be essential to the defence of our pensions and, in the runup to that action, the provision of resources to secure the re-election of politicians who are leading the attack upon us is the moral and political equivalent of strike-breaking.
UNISON members need neither Tony Blair and attacks on our pensions now, nor Gordon Brown and more attacks on our pensions later. A vote for the United Left in the election for UNISON General Secretary is a vote against a blank cheque for either Blair or Brown.
Gordon Brown is the champion of the Private Finance Initiative, which attacks the jobs and conditions of UNISON members. More recently, he rushed the announcement of 100,000 civil service job cuts because he was prepared to use mass redundancies to wrongfoot the hapless Tories.
Some of the jobs now being lost belong to UNISON members working in central government. These UNISON members won’t thank Prentis for backing Brown.
Nor is Gordon Brown lifting a finger to prevent the attack on public service pensions. The Daily Record quotes Dave Prentis saying that 'the government haven't had the sense to defer it (the attack on pensions) until after the election.' He should be demanding that there are no cuts in our pensions before or after the election!
Support for Gordon Brown is just the highest-profile expression of the politically-indiscriminate approach to supporting Labour in the runup to the general election which gives the lie to protestations that UNISON Labour Link is fighting our corner within the Labour Party.
While one part of our union prepares to fight the government to defend our pensions, another is proposing to issue precisely the political blank cheque to New Labour which we had been told would never again be written.
Through TULO (the Trade Union Labour Organisation), the trade unions have been preparing financial support for Labour in marginal constituencies whether or not the MPs in those constituencies support UNISON policies, or are enthusiastic New Labour apparatchiks who support the attack on our pensions.
The immediate question confronting UNISON members right now is the attack upon the Local Government and NHS Pension Schemes. Industrial action will be essential to the defence of our pensions and, in the runup to that action, the provision of resources to secure the re-election of politicians who are leading the attack upon us is the moral and political equivalent of strike-breaking.
UNISON members need neither Tony Blair and attacks on our pensions now, nor Gordon Brown and more attacks on our pensions later. A vote for the United Left in the election for UNISON General Secretary is a vote against a blank cheque for either Blair or Brown.
JonR
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